Monday |Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday
I came in at 7:45 since this is the first day of the teachers workshops. RUthie, Jenna and I handed out the parking permits to all of the teachers. I think Jenna said that about nineteen teachers hadn't arrived at 9am. Hopefully they'll show up at some point today because that's a lot of people.I updated my personal website by putting some example worlds that I've made on my homepage. I only went back to the office for a little while before Ruthie came running in looking really overwhelmed. Helping the teachers out has been pretty fun. I think my background in TAing helped me to expect and respond to their questions. There was quite a range of the teachers. Some had problems starting alice on their own computers while others were already coding before lunch. I ate lunch with a few of the teachers and I've enjoyed getting to know them so far.
Bob Vincent told me that he would like to make a simulation of cameron indoor stadium of his high school seniors graduation ceremony. (It is probably fairly complicated to set that up). Later on, an 8th grade science teacher told me that she wanted to simulate the various phases of water in nature. I am actually started that one that right away. I'm almost finished making the set up. But I'll only show Professor Rodger when I finish because I believe that this teacher is going to attempt to make her own version for their assignment due on Friday. For the rest of the day, I continued to help the teachers as they asked questions. I would say we had a very successful first day.
Today I came in and finished updating the methods tutorial so that it could be used today. As I helped the teachers with their work, I worked on the water world. One of the teachers told me that she liked the world I made the best so far. That made me feel pretty good. What a day today was. I guess keeping all of the teachers together led to some of them being quite confused. If we do split them up, I everyone is still able to keep progressing.
My sister came to have lunch with me. And she was able to meet some of the people I'm working with. For the rest of the day, i went over Jenna's tutorial. I didn't really get to do much else because there were so many questions. But I was able to finish making the water world example. I'm not sure I'm completely happy with it just yet though.
Yesterday I worked for 9 hours. First Gaetjens and I stayed later to help answer last minute questions. Then after I left the LSRC, I decided to go ahead and finish the revisions for the part two of Methods. This morning, I started helping the teachers again. Thankfully, the fire drill was just a drill. Now, I'm going to try to get some work done on my function tutorial. By lunch time, I hadn't made it too far on the function tutorial. I made a version of the world without parameters and a version with parameters. The teachers seem to be grasping everything much better than yesterday. I enjoyed helping them make their worlds. It's always interesting to see the little differences in their assigments. Then Gaetjens asked me to look over his tutorial. And while I was doing that, Jenna told me that she'd just finished making a function tutorial. I'm going to look over it tomorrow to see how I should revise the one that I'm in the middle of making.
Today I went over Jenna's tutorial. I've decided to make the built-in function tutorial I was making into an example world. And now I'll going to finish making the create a function tutorial. At lunch, I had a nice conversation with Sheri Grantlin, Alisa White. Michael Noto and I also spoke and we think that my sister and his brother are in film school together. Pretty cool. For the rest of the day, I continued to help people. I asked some of the teachers for feedback on my methods and parameter tutorials. And I am going over a tutorial that Henry made about his computer game. I added another scene to my Water World. Then I showed it to Ms. White. She enjoyed it and asked if she could keep it for her class. That was really cool.
This morning, all of the teachers watched my Water World. Then I started making the descriptions for my example worlds to go up on the home page. But since it was the last day of the week, a lot of people had questions about their worlds. It was a very good day. So many teachers have created some really creative worlds. I think this is a good start to incorporating Alice in the classroom. I can't wait to see the finished projects next week. Also, Henry and Jenna asked me to go over their tutorials. I'll have to finish going over them by Monday.